and some of them have to learn a
lot--learn not to play on volcanoes. But for downright, running-to-earth
methods, look to such girls as Nan. They have the tide with them. Men,
unless they're there to be caught, better watch out!"

"Oh! come, child, don't be sinister."

"I'm not, Uncle David," Joan's eyes shone; she was thinking of Patricia;
"but you, everybody, lose a lot if they do not really know the truth
about women--the real truth."

"My dear," David was quite serious, "I'm no longer hard or misjudging--I
was frightened at your aunt's methods with you, but you're proving me
wrong every day."

"You should have trusted her more, Uncle David."

"Yes, you are right, in part. I should have trusted her less--in some
ways."

"About me?"

"No. About herself." Martin flecked the ashes from his cigar. "And now,"
he said with a huge sigh that seemed to sweep all regrets before it, "go
and wash your face!"

Joan ran away, and when she came back the room was empty and the
_honk-honk_ of Martin's horn sounded down the river road.

Then, as often happens when one stands in an empty room, Joan was
conscious of a supersensitiveness. She, quite naturally, attributed it
to the ordeal she was about to undergo--the meeting with Clive Cameron
and her late talk with Martin. Must she always be on the defensive? Must
she always feel that her volcano had blown her up when really she had
escaped by its light?

While there was a certain amount of pleasurable excitement in the
meeting with Cameron, while it lacked all that her meeting with Raymond
had held, still her past experiences were of so uncommon a nature that
she could not contemplate them without nervous strain, and she wished
that she might have had a longer reprieve before Cameron came.

"With nothing really to be ashamed of," she thought, "I feel like a
criminal dodging justice. I wish something so big would come that I
could lose myself in it."

Then she walked to the window overlooking The Gap.

"It's no easy matter, Joan my lamb!" almost it seemed as if it were
Patricia speaking, "to tie both ends of the rainbow together." Joan
smiled at her thought.

"Dear, dear old Pat!" she spoke the words aloud. "The very thought of
you--braces me."

Joan was still on the backward trail. She did not often tread it, but
when she did she always returned starry-eyed and brave-hearted. That was
her reward: the reward that she could share with no one--except as it
helped he